What's Old is New

You think landscaping, house keeping, and nannying are tough? You should try harvesting sugarcane.

The President would have us believe that Americans just aren't willing to do some jobs. What he really means is that Americans aren't willing to do some jobs for the wages most employers are willing to pay. FDR faced a similar claim from Big Sugar in the 1930s and '40s. His solution? A guest worker program.

Timothy P. Carney of The American Conservative takes a look at how guest workers became indentured servants to the sugar growers, all because they were doing a job that "Americans were not willing to do."

Harvesting the sugarcane was "grueling, dangerous, and monotonous." However, Carney notes, "danger, monotony, and difficulty are not sufficient to make a job unfillable. Alaska crab fishermen, U.S. Marines, international spies, Hollywood stuntmen all have jobs that satisfy at least two of those conditions. These employers, therefore, are forced to make the jobs attractive."

In a free market, one of two things should happen: Either employers have to pony up wages and bonuses that make the jobs attractive, or the jobs go undone. If we truly need the goods or services, option 1 will always win out. What we don't need is the intrusion of the government into the mix.

The same people who kick and scream about eliminating poverty, raising the minimum wage, and handing out government money to "help those who need it most" are also the ones protesting in favor of a guest worker program.

By creating a guest worker program, we drive down wages and create a second-tier citizenry who are at the mercy of the government and their employers, just like the cane harvesters of the last century.

HT: A Certain Slant of Light